BBC's Chimera botnet

Earlier this month, the controversial BBC purchase of a botnet and modifying the infected hosts in the name of �public interest� sparked a lot of debate on the pros and cons of their action. Condemned by certain security vendors, and naturally, at least from guerrilla PR perspective, applauded and encouraged as a awareness raising tactic by others, the discussion shifted from technical to moral and legal debate, leaving a single question unanswered - what is the name of the botnet that the BBC rented and what�s so special about it?

Until now. Let�s take a peek inside the BBC �Chimera Botnet� offered for rent by a Russian Cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) vendor.



The Chimera botnet is courtesy of a Russian vendor developing web applications and backend systems for botnets, with a particular emphasis on coding malware for hire. Some of their most notable (public) releases include performance-boosting modifications within the Zeus crimeware kit, the introduction of a carding-theme within the kit (now an inseparable part of all the new versions), and integrating a MP3-player/online radio feature within the crimeware kit. The managed service offers two versions in a typical modular-malware fashion in this case for spamming and launching DDoS attacks, with the backend�s interface exclusively based on the ExtJS AJAX framework, with the malware itself compatible with Windows SP sp1/2/3, and Windows Vista with the authors claiming it will run as an authorized application.

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